What is the difference between an IntentService and a Service?

Question

Can you please help me understand what the difference between an IntentService and a Service is?

Answer 1

In short, a Service is a broader implementation for the developer to set up background operations, while an IntentService is useful for "fire and forget" operations, taking care of background Thread creation and cleanup.

From the docs:

Service A Service is an application component representing either an application's desire to perform a longer-running operation while not interacting with the user or to supply functionality for other applications to use.

IntentService Service is a base class for IntentService Services that handle asynchronous requests (expressed as Intents) on demand. Clients send requests through startService(Intent) calls; the service is started as needed, handles each Intent in turn using a worker thread, and stops itself when it runs out of work.

Refer this doc - http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/IntentService.html